Relationships Between Quality of Care, Empowerment, and Outcomes in Psychiatric Inpatients

Background: Consumer perceptions of care are a key measure of service quality. The Consumer Perceptions of Care (CPoC) survey is often used to assess patients’ evaluations of the quality of services received. Aims: The study explored the factor structure of the CPoC, the relationships between perceived quality of care, empowerment, perceived treatment outcomes, and symptom change, as well as the effect of allowing patients to self-identify during the CPoC survey on their ratings of perceptions of care. Methods: In the first phase of the current study, 2,125 psychiatric inpatients were surveyed about their perceptions of care, and their symptoms were also measured at both admission and discharge. The second phase examined 720 inpatients who had given consent so that perceptions of care could be compared with outcome data. Results: Increased levels of empowerment were associated with favourable ratings of perceived treatment outcomes. Although perceived treatment outcomes and empowerment were correlated with actual symptom change, these correlations were small. Furthermore, the influence of self-identification on ratings of perceptions of care was found to be small. Conclusions: Examining patients’ perceived and actual treatment outcomes may provide mental health service providers with a more nuanced perspective of the hospital experiences of their patients.